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Comment by acoustics | Hacker News Reader

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acoustics·

iMessage is extraordinarily popular in the US. Its userbase dwarfs Signal by over an order of magnitude

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Ah fair enough. Not as many use it here in Australia

Is there data behind that or is it just anecdata?

A year ago someone on HN said “I can confirm that iMessage is extremely common in Australia. WhatsApp is very uncommon, outside of people with European (and maybe South American?) friends or family to keep in touch with.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39365562

My guess is you’re both expressing truths of your individual social circles but making unjustified extrapolations to an entire nation.

iMessage is very popular in the US but 90% of users just think they are "texting". There's no other way to send an SMS for them.

I can also confirmed that iMessage is basically unused in France. (And that was a core argument in the EU of Apple against the DMA for iMessage, so even Apple admits its low usage in the EU)

The issue with iMessage outside the US is the branding, it's branded as an SMS app and SMS being dead (outside of ads and delivery drivers) doesn't help for adoption.

iMessage is popular in the US because everyone has an iPhone because everyone has iMessage and everyone connects it to social status - network effects. The same reason (besides the social status) everyone uses WhatsApp in Europe.

This has more to do with the way the iPhone was launched, and the American desire to own the most expensive product, than any technical merits.

They've also finally added RCS support so while you still get "green bubbles" you mostly avoid SMS

Still no encrypted RCS support though.

That's true . The only stats I could find are unreliable SMS marketing company ones.

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